Sister Madsen loves dogs and is a memeber of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She has been called to serve as a missionary in the Illinois Chicago West Mission

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

play ball November 7, 2016

Everyone's hearts here in Illinois have been so soft. And I thank the Cubs for that.

It is truly an honor to be here at such a time when God has so much in store for the great and flat state of Illinois.

This week we had a lot of appointments cancel on us. Which is never fun. But after a lot of studying about the whiteness of the field, and the mention of our call to build up Zion in these last days at Zone Conference, Sister Corbett and I have prayerfully decided to call this up coming week "Do or Die" week. We currently have 10 investigators and none are progressing. Some have been investigators longer than others, but it is just time to sit down with all of them and have some #realtalk and see where they are spiritually and where they want to go We really want to build up the ward here in Freeport and have been praying to find a family to teach, as well as finding people who are ready to keep commitments. and we know that there are people in Freeport that God has been preparing who are ready to hear the gospel. The field is not brown ready to plant or yellow ready to water it is white ready to harvest and WE are ready to harvest as well haha. It has been cool to see as we have committed ourselves more seriously to this work and are doing the will of God He has put more people in our path!! There are always people who are prepared, sometimes we just have to make room for them. Which is sad for the people that we have been teaching and growing close to, but their time will come when they are ready.

This week we decided to stop by a man named George who Sister Peterson and I found awhile back while tracting. He is a total cowboy and has this great mustache. He told us he was a member of the church when he was a teen (he is now a grandfather... at least.) we talked with him around conference time and he told us he had been there live and maybe he and his wife Wanda (who is not a member) would come. Well they didn't. But we felt like we should go see him so we stopped by and talked for him for a little bit and he says to us "this is the 5th time this week that someone has told me that I need to go to church, I probably need to go." can you say PREPARED. It was awesome. He told us that he still had the card that sister Peterson and I had given him with the time and address of the church and he had asked Wanda if she would want to go and she said yes! So he said they would either come this week or next week because they were going to go to a couple of churches before deciding on one. We talked for him for awhile and it was really good. Afterwards I just felt really happy and grateful to be able to talk with George. Because he is just so normal and understands and you don't have to explain anything to him. The people of Freeport are great and I love them. But sometimes they are insane. And say crazy things like "if you stare at the sun long enough and then blink a lot and fan your eyes you can see the celestial kingdom" or how they remember being a butterfly in their past life. WHICH. is very entertaining, but sometimes you just want to talk about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And George let us do that. And so did a lady named Pam, and a man named Robert with his cute daughter Jayla. Who is probably 3 or 4 and we gave her a restoration pamphlet and she looked at the picture of Jesus and then hugged it and said "I Love This" in her cute 4 year old voice. Sister Corbett and I are PUMPED and have been and will be tracting (and other finding activities) our brains out and talking with everyone. and although the more people we talk to means the more crazy people we will talk to it also means the more prepared people we will talk to

ANOTHER THING

I was going to end the email right there but I remembered a cool thing. This entire transfer Sister Corbett and I have been looking for a service project to do in the community and haven't been able to find anything. But last week we stopped at the Salvation Army and asked about volunteer opportunities and the lady there told us to come back at 8 in the morning, but we had a couple appointments and things going on so we weren't able to do it until Friday. so we went in on Friday and there was a lady standing in the office and we asked her about serving and she got really excited and hugged us and thanked God for answering her prayers! It turns out that two of her cooks for the soup kitchen had called in and weren't coming so she was going to be two people short. and then tada we show up. it was really cool. God answered her prayers but guiding us to come when we did. and he answered our prayers by helping us to finally be able to find a place where we can serve

A side note for that, there is a cool app that you can download called JustServe that shows a lot of service opportunities in local areas. It is church based I believe so there should be a TON of people and companies using it in Utah, so if you ever want to volunteer or stop wasting time lounging around this app is a great way to help other people!!

See ya l8tr

🐻Sister Madsen🐻

Rockford South Zone!

We went to see a potential and he had taped the card we gave him the last time we saw him to his door.

And Sister Corbett took this picture after our 3 hour planning session and..yeah..

In honor of the Comeback Cubs we went to one of Freeport's many treasures...Little Cubs Field